


Starcrossed Misadventure

by Inspirationalmisquotes



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Dominant Kylo Ren, Doomed Relationship, Dubious Consent, F/M, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren is patronizing, Marriage Alliance, Obsessive Kylo Ren, Rey fights dirty, Romeo and Juliet References, Rough Sex, hunger strikes, like excessive Romeo and Juliet references, power trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-05-27 14:32:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15026732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inspirationalmisquotes/pseuds/Inspirationalmisquotes
Summary: It ends as it began; in a fairytale forest with the word coming down around them.





	1. wolvish-ravening lamb

**Author's Note:**

> I like to have a few different projects going on at once. Keeps things interesting. Mind the tags, and enjoy!

It isn’t much of a fight.

It was never going to be. Because these are the facts--

Rey is gifted. Rey is special. Rey is a force to be reckoned with.

But Kylo Ren is simply older and more experienced. And, more importantly, this time he hasn’t been recently shot.

It ends as it began; in a fairytale forest with the word coming down around them.

Or it may have been fairytale, before it became a warzone. Now everything is bright and brittle, glowing scarlet, charred to dust. The surrounding trees grow in pockets and raised little groves, hunched under a heavy cloud of pollution and exhaust, quivering with the impact of every explosion. The leaves have rolled themselves up into ringlets and the trunks are cracking apart, seeping sticky rills of rust-red sap. It’s like the forest is bleeding. He can taste the ashes. He can sense her fear.

Far off in the distance, there is the amplified drone of Hux shrieking into a microphone somewhere, and the screams of the wounded and the grinding mechanical whir of propellers hacking away at the air. There are sirens. There are screams.

There is her.

“Have you come to kill me, little one?” he says, swinging his saber carelessly. He stalks closer, daring her to back away.

She doesn’t answer. Light crackles to life between them, casting a pale, ice-blue shadow across her pretty face. “I’ve come to end this.”

That almost makes him smile. Almost. “You will.” he promises.

She gives him a good fight. It’s just not good enough. It was never going to be.

Rey is graceful and vicious, but badly hurt, and woefully unprepared. She hacks away, blade whining as it whips through the air, as he dodges and deflects. She’s livid. It comes off her in white-hot waves. She’s so angry she can’t see straight.

And that— the hypocrisy, the nerve of it— should make him lose his senses. But this is courtship, as much as it is warfare, and she’s not going to rile him so much he can’t enjoy this.

“Good girl.” he murmurs, stepping back to let her catch her breath. “But don’t swing so much from the shoulder. You don’t need too much force behind a blow when your blade is a laser.”

“Shut up.” she growls.

The scavenger girl spits hair out of her mouth and rears back to club him with her saber.

She misses, of course.

Once again, he’s astounded by the rebels’ cruelty. They cast this little girl into his warpath and told her to save the galaxy. This desert orphan. This motherless child.  
They set her up against Kylo Ren. A man who can put her on her back with sheer will and a flick of his wrist.

And he does.

For a moment, her mouth rounds in surprise. Genuine disbelief. Then she’s angry. Then he feels the chord of their bond snap tight as her heart rattles around in her ribcage.  
Fear.

Kylo takes his time walking towards her, making sure she can hear every ominous foot-fall as he draws nearer. He crouches down beside her.

Rey thrashes. She tries to will herself out of his grasp. When it’s clear that it’s over, she tries to sever the bond—perhaps out of spite—or desperation.

The bond doesn’t break, or even stretch.

It never does.

And still she is afraid. She’s always been so afraid of him.

“Do you know what I’m going to do to you, Scavenger?” he murmurs, blade still thrumming, lips near her throat.

She thrashes and lets out a pitiful little mewl. His lips twitch into a quarter-smile. He drags his gloved hand over her long, loose hair, cracks in the leather snagging on the tangles.  
He’s stalling. Part of him wants to savor this.

But he knows better than to fawn over his spoils for too long. Rey fights dirty— and if he gives her an inch, next thing he knows she’ll be driving a stick into his eye or smashing his head in with a rock.

“Do you remember…” he casts a look around the forest, squinting in the waning, ruddy light. “How I offered you everything? And in return you tried to kill me?” he brushes a lazy kiss against her cheek, and she tries to bite him. “Because I remember.”

He can see her breasts through her tunic; peaked, perfect rosy little mouthfuls. He knows she’d be so pretty under her clothes.

He could ravage her here and now, if she’d have him. But she’s quivering, white-lipped and helpless, and the sight of her in such distress hurts him. He doesn’t want to frighten her anymore.

Not much. Not now, at least.

He’s still angry at her. There’s no chance of recompense, no possibility of compensation. If he were to make her pay— truly pay— for abandoning him, he could forget all hopes of making her love him.

So he’s let the past die. Her treachery will go unpunished.

He’s forgiven her.

“You still want to kill me.” he lists his head, considering her. “After all this time.”

But she’s trembling like she’s going to shake out of her skin, her eyes squeezed tight and head rolling in the soft red soil. Tears roll over her temples and into her hair. “Just do it.” her voice cracks. “Just kill me already.”

He can sense her arousal, thick and sweet and sickeningly rich, like syrup. How she aches between her legs when she hears his voice.

She’s desperate for him.

And desperately afraid.

“My love.” he says, sitting back on his haunches. “Do you really think it’s that simple?”

“Ben, _please_.”

His thumb grazes her temple, and she sleeps.


	2. Pay no worship to the garish sun

Hux is desperately embarrassed for him.

Kylo senses it as soon as he boards the ship with the girl in his arms for the second time. He and the general have no love lost between them. It’s rare they experience anything resembling sympathy for each other. But Hux is radiating mortification, glowing red to the tips of his ears.

“There are other women,” he is saying, scampering along the corridor to match Kylo stride for stride.

Kylo ignores him, cradling the girl’s head in the crook of his elbow. She is so young. So sweet and delicate and vulnerable. It’s never been more apparent how much she needs him.

“Scores more.” Hux goes on. “Women of nobler status, with— of— from far less modest means. There are worlds full of women more beautiful.”

Kylo takes a sharp turn, and Hux staggers sideways, nearly tripping over a maintenance droid. Slapstick.

“Supreme Leader.” Hux gasps, regaining balance and jogging after him, “I implore you to reconsider.”

“How do you know I’m not preparing her for execution, Armitage?” 

They reach the infirmary, and he lays her carefully on the examination table.

Hux sneers. “I’m no fool, Ren. Half the galaxy knows about your... fixation.”

“She has a blaster wound in her left shoulder, partially cauterized already, shallow.” he says to the med-droid. “She’s right handed, but was favoring her left when I saw her. I think she may have hurt her shoulder somehow.”

“Ren, this will ruin you.”

“Then why are you concerned?”

He fixes the unflinching med-droid with his most terrifying glare. It’s lifeless eyes stare back at him. “Be careful with her.”

“Yes Sir.”

“Ren.” Hux chases him into the hall.

“Yes, General?”

“Listen to me.” Hux snarls. “She is a desert rat. Even you, in your position, are above such—”

His head hits the wall. Kylo can’t recall if he struck him or used the force, but his knuckles are smarting, so that’s likely an indicator.

There are droids clamoring by the wayside on his trek back to his chambers, chirping at his heels that he needs the med-bay— but all he wants is to take off his armor. The metal plate protecting his breastbone is grinding painfully against his clavicle, and there’s blood crusting on his gloves.

He wants to be clean. He wants to rest.

They can send out a broadcast announcing their victory in the morning. After he’s washed his hair.

But he doesn’t get to rest. He’s intercepted three times on his way to the elevator alone. He has to settle a nonsensical, petty dispute with some of his high-ranking officers about who-succeeds-who now that half the fleet is dead.

In another hour, the broadcast has been sent out, and systems all over the galaxy trip over each other to swear their allegiance to the First Order. Around the same time, the ship lands on Mustafar.

The castle looms out over a sea of volcanic ash, set with high, spiked gates and a lake of fire instead of a moat. Two tall black spires like syringes jut up into the molten black sky.

“Not a terribly practical place to put a castle,” Hux had remarked, when they’d first seen it together.

It had been crumbling, then. Forgotten, lost to history, like his Grandfather’s legacy. A legacy Kylo Ren has restored.

His Knights are scattered to the winds, most of them fighting on planets and moons he’d scarcely heard of weeks ago. With his boyhood friends absent, there’s no one he trusts to escort Rey to her chambers, so he sends word to the infirmary that no one will touch her but the droids.

He thinks, as he drags himself up the endless rotunda towards their room, that he’ll get her a handmaiden at some point. It’ll be good for her to have someone to supervise her and keep her company while he’s off-world. Someone her own age, who will love her enough to die for her, but not so much she’ll aid her in escaping.

He’ll have to come back to that.

Their rooms are nestled at the top of the East Tower, hidden amid a maze of listlessly twisting hallways and stairways that lead nowhere. She’s been laid out in her chambers— a spacious, opulent set of shadowy stone rooms branching off his own— in a flowing gossamer nightdress with her hands folded delicately over her heart.

He stands in the doorway, watching her, frozen stock-still by a sudden, scorching wave of affection for her. It spills over him like hot water.

He falls to his knees at her bedside and strokes a finger down her cheek. “Rey.” he wills her to open her eyes.

She wakes like a startled loth cat.

He’s expecting her to try to blast him into the wall, and she only half-succeeds. He’s knocked off his knees and thrust upright, the small of his back knocking painfully into the back of a chaise lounge.

“I missed you too, Rey.” he says, gasping. He has to remember not to give her so much leeway.

She nearly rolls off the bed, still drowsy and stupid from pain killers, but none the more docile. She tries to force him into the wall again, but this time, he’s ready for her.

Rey snarls and curses at him, words he didn’t know she knew. Then, when she’s exhausted all the finer parts of her particular vocabulary— “What in the _hell_ am I wearing?”

“I didn’t dress you.”

“Well then who bloody did?”

“I suppose it was the droids— you have had three tending to you, one is medical, one is—“

“Droids? What— how long have—” She looks around wildly for a weapon.

“The war is over.” He says, as gently as he can. “We have generals Organa and Dameron. Most of your forces are dead or captured.” He draws nearer, carefully, and rests his hand on her knee. She slaps it away.

“The War is over, last little Jedi.”


	3. Swear by the moon

 

Kylo doesn’t beg.

He doesn’t.

He doesn’t _need_ to beg.

She’s the one who should be grovelling. He has her cornered. She is totally at his mercy.

“—and you’ll have whatever you want,” he says, “and you’ll never be hungry or in need of anything. You’ll have a generous allowance and a chaperone to take you off-world, and gardens and projects and dresses and whatever else you want. I’ll be so good to you.”

He isn’t begging. Clearly.

Rey stares up at him, slightly slack-jawed.

“As a wedding gift,” he goes on, scratching between his brows with his thumbnail, “I’m willing to spare your… allies. Even the pilot. And the… FN-2187.”

“So I’ll have no power?” She says, rearing up on her knees, chin in the air, looking wronged and righteous in all her glory.

He takes a deep breath. He is patient with her. Only with her, and only some of the time. “No, my love.” He says, as gently as he can. “You’ve lost that right.”

“And I’ll be shut up in your room all day?” She’s getting wound up now. “And toted about on your arm at parties?”

“I’m certain I never said that. You may of course come and go as you please; but you will not be permitted to leave the castle unchaperoned until I’m convinced you won’t run. And you will have a tracker implanted in your arm.”

She gives him a look of pure disgust. “You can’t be serious.”

“You had your chance.” He reminds her, impressed by how calm he sounds. “If you hadn’t tried to murder me last I saw you, you could have been my queen, rather than merely my wife. We could have ruled together.”

“I’d rather set myself on fire.”

“Suit yourself.” he’s losing patience fast, and he has to keep his head. He has to remember what’s at stake.

She seems to have the same thought. A little crease appears between her brows, and her hands scrunch up in the fabric of her gown. “What happens if I say no?” Uncertainty, anxiety, and at last, triumph, cross her face. “You can’t make me. And you won’t kill me, I’ve seen it.”

“No,” he admits. “But you’re not in any position to dictate, little Jedi.”

She bristles.

“If you decline my generous offer,” he says, “The terms of surrender agreed to by General Organa will change. _Dramatically_.”

He didn’t think her nose could get any higher in the air. He was wrong. “You don’t scare me.” she spits out. He can feel her heartbeat fluttering.

“Small feat.” he remarks. “You know _you_ have nothing to fear from me.”

The implication hangs in the air.

She swallows and sits back on her heels so her knees stretch out the lavender gauze of her night dress. Her gaze drops to the coverlet, then sweeps up and feebly scans over the room, ignoring—he realizes, with some offense—the painstaking detail he took in ensuring her comfort. There are trellises caging the cold stone walls, plastered with a lacework of vines, thin as cobwebs, and studded with clusters of pearly blossoms. There are shelves and shelves of books; old Jedi rubbish and fairytales alike.

He saw, when he first looked into her head, how she had played with dolls late into her teens. They were made of straw and rags and polished scraps of salvage, but she had cared for them with as much tenderness as if they were real babies.

He thought about getting her a doll as well, when he was having the room put together. But he’s since thought better of it. He’s shamelessly infantilizing where she is concerned, but that in particular may send the wrong sort of message.

And anyway, the memory had embarrassed her. Maybe he’ll just get her a pet.

She stares at the luminescent flowers without appreciation for what feels like forever. When at last she finds her voice again, it is very small. “Will I have to…” she goes very white, then very pink. “You… you know.”

“Something tells me you’ll be able to soldier through it.” He can’t keep the bitterness at bay. She must sense it.

She blushes, and he feels a ripple of pleasure shoot down her spine.  
Ignorant and inexperienced she may be— but she’s twice the lecher he is.

It’s all she wants from him. All he is to her is an adrenaline high. He may scare her senseless, but since she first laid eyes on him, “Will I have to… you know,” is all she’s wanted from him.

A memory flutters across the forefront of her consciousness, and he catches it without meaning to. Him, bared to the waist, looming over her, looking intense and terrifying and exciting and new, so much broader than she remembered, so much stronger than she’d expected him to be under all that heavy armor, and his arms, his arms, how easily he could pin her down—

She flicks her head, as if snapping an invisible thread between their eyes, and the image dissipates. Her cheeks glow pink.

He bites the corners of his mouth to smother a triumphant smile. At the same time, the knowledge wrenches at his heart. She wants him. She doesn’t need him. Not like he needs her.

“You can speak to General Organa,” he tells her. He pulls his communicator off his gauntlet and tosses it onto the bedspread. 

He feels her eyes burning into his back as he heads for the fresher. Blythe. Unsympathetic.  
Her fear hurts him, but a part of him revels in it. Deep down, he knows it’s less than she deserves.

“You have until morning to decide.” he says, and closes the door between them.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One hell of a marriage proposal, wasn’t it? (: Thanks for reading!


	4. You Kiss by the Book

 

  
He’d been expecting outrage on her behalf. 

Bitter, misguided retaliation in some form or another— at the very least some pitiful attempt at rescue.

But none of her rebel friends are rallying the way he thought they would.

Their reaction as a whole has been less righteous anger than total confusion.

It’s a bit annoying, actually.

The signing of the peace treaty is attended by only seven people besides himself and Hux. There is the general, via hologram, from her hospital bed in a First Order base. There are a handful of unremarkable faces he can’t be bothered to commit to memory. There is Poe Dameron, whose smug, handsome face he’d like to uncommit to memory, and FN-2187, who he fears he may kill before the meeting’s end.

He intends to invite many Resistance-members to the wedding ceremony, as much to placate his bride as to twist the knife. She will select the flowers, colors, themes, courses, music, and the dress. She will have whoever she wants in her bridal party. She will have whatever she wants.

Except _them_.

Those two will never see her again.

“Who now?” the pilot is the worst. He seems to think his own lack of understanding is someone else’s fault. “Back up. Back up. _What?”_

“The terms are fairly straightforward.” says Hux, monotonously. “And outlined in the brief you were all—”  
“You want to marry Rey?” a small, sweet-looking girl with peculiar hair squints up at Kylo. She rolls her chair closer to him, as if getting a better look at him will help her understand.

She isn’t afraid of him in the slightest, and Kylo doesn’t know whether to be offended or impressed. “But… you’re a Sith.” She goes on, curiously. “How does that even work?”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait.” the pilot says again, thumbs grinding circles into his temples. “Hang on, Rosie. Give me a second to… get my head around this.”

There’s another long pause. They all seem shell shocked. He can sense that among many of them, there is no room for anger. Only disbelief.

Even his mother, a flat projection of of crackling blue pixels, seems at a loss for words. He can sense her astonishment from light years away.

“You want to...” she looks ill, but not at all afraid of him. She’s never been afraid of him. The brave, dear old fool. “You want to marry her?”

“Political marriages are hardly a contemporary institution.” he says, ignoring all the bemused faces gazing stupidly up at him. “And the girl has already accepted my offer.”

“Yeah, but… why?” one of the nameless rebels pipes up. “Don’t you two hate each other? Don’t you… try to kill each other? A lot?”

“I don’t hate her.” he says, feeling self-conscious and stupid.

He was never any good at this. Socializing. Politicking.

“If Rey has already agreed to their terms, there’s little else we can do.” says the general, after an eternity.

The pilot’s head snaps up. “ _What_? What? No. We’re not—we’re not just going to hand Rey over to—?” he gestures.

“It isn’t our decision to make.” Says the General. She sighs, long and heartbroken and defeated. There’s a weakness in her dear, familiar voice that Kylo doesn’t recognize. “She’s already  
signed. We’ve surrendered. There’s nothing else to be done.”

“No!” The traitor and pilot spring to their feet simultaneously. Hux arms his blaster, but Kylo does not move.

He had promised her. He had promised.

_Don’t kill the traitor don’t kill the pilot don’t kill the traitor don’t kill—_

The pilot sits down at the first word of warning from General Organa. But FN-2187 stands resolute, defiant and unflinching, utterly defective, willful, irreverent—

Kylo should kill him—

“Finn.” says the sweet-looking girl in the corner seat. It sounds like less of a reprimand than a warning, as if he’s standing too close to a cliff's edge.

Dameron puts his hand on the traitor’s arm.

“I won’t abandon her.” Finn swears. “I won’t leave her to you.”

“Do you think I’ll have her chained up in the basement?” Kylo’s laugh is muffled to a dull, low hum through the sieve of his speech grate.

The traitor actually gnashes his teeth. “I think you’ll have her chained to your _bed_.”

Silence.

The General suddenly goes very white. The young girl in the corner seat blushes, and looks suddenly very upset. Hux gives what he probably thinks is a light, tension-diffusing chuckle.

“Finn, sit down.” Someone says.

“I don’t think he’ll hurt her.” The little girl named Rose sounds flighty and panicky. Her hands shake like the flapping wings of a nervous bird. “He won’t. He— you won’t, will you?”

“No.” Says Kylo, dumbly. “I—“

Hux talks over him. “The Scavenger girl is to be His Excellency’s queen.” He says, importantly, ignoring the hateful glares he receives from the entire company. “Need I remind you, rebels— she might have been executed. You all might have been executed. One by one on a galaxy-wide broadcast. And instead you will be guests at the royal wedding. Consider that.” He lets his words hang in the air.

“Consider.” Says Hux. “And be grateful.”

 

He can’t seem to pin down her feelings about the upcoming ceremony— particularly its aftermath. 

Her feelings flicker to him across the bond like irrelevant fragments of passing memory. He feels the nervous, nagging feeling of her anxiety rattling around in his skull. The sharp, cold pang of her fear, like ice water. The deep, wrenching ache of her resentment. But most of all, he feels her lust. It hits him in shocks and spikes. It’s a base, shameful, compulsory thing, darkly curious and ravenous. She wants him she wants him she wants him.

Preparations for the wedding are swift and nonsensical. As much as he can, Kylo delegates planning the event to the droids, and the castle’s few human staff-members.

He ended up getting Rey three handmaidens instead of one. None of them are close to her in age. They’re all matronly, reliable old busybodies one of his knights uprooted and shipped over from a convent on Dantooine. There are three of them; Mim, Kaye, and Lissie. Nurturing, unextraordinary women, whose thoughts are so noisy and transparent he’s sure he could hear them for miles.

Even if they were fool enough to help the girl escape, he would know about it immediately.

Rey doesn’t know what to do with her new handmaidens. She refuses to stop washing her own clothes or making her own bed. She won’t accept any help dressing or bathing, and when things fall on the floor it’s a whole production. She spreads her hands and hollers, “I’ve got it, don’t help,” bunches up her skirts to her knees and shuffles around gathering whatever it is that’s fallen; hair pins, centerpieces, dress patterns, or holovid wedding invitations.

She’s having a grand old time selecting her dress. He’s had samples sent in from the furthest reaches of the galaxy, and enlisted Lissie, a former seamstress, to make adjustments for her.

Rey is simultaneously bored and overwhelmed by the process. She asks him if she can have any other colors— a white dress seems just a bit on the nose.

He tells her he knows she thinks so.

And she’s being very dramatic about being dressed up. She doesn’t seem to think she needs ten feet of train, or jewels on the bodice, or anything so “slippery” as silk. But he catches her later, standing on the dais in her changing room with her eyes closed, rubbing the sleeve of her favorite gown against her cheek.

“I like that one.” He tells her.

Rey jumps out of her skin.

“It’s pretty.” He says. “It looks like a Jedi’s robes.”

She casts him bored look over her shoulder, her default for masking her terror. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” she says.

He comes up behind her in the mirror and wraps his arms around her, pinning her to him. She squirms in his grasp.

“Why are you doing this?” She asks, watching him kiss her bare shoulder in the mirror.  
He holds her to him. “Can you not guess?”

Her eyes squeeze shut. “Am I.. am I ever going to leave this place?”

“Of course. We’ll travel all over the galaxy.” He soothes. “Next cycle, you’ll come with me aboard the Supremacy for the tour. The people want to meet their new queen.”

There’s a long pause. She doesn’t smile at him in the mirror, or thank him, or react at all. Her eyes are glassy. Kylo feels a prickle of irritation.

“But then. I suppose the whole galaxy never was enough for you.”

He smacks a hard kiss against her neck and hikes up her skirt with one hand.

She swats at his arm carelessly, as if he’s a minor annoyance. Silly little girl. She can’t even guess what he’s doing.

Then he’s twisting up the gusset of her underwear and tugging so it rasps against her clit, and she’s clutching his arms and smacking her head off his shoulder, babbling incoherently, no, wait, harder, stop, more, _theretherethere._

Pleasure radiates off her in waves, embarrassment and surprise dulled to ripples.

He withdraws his hand, and the sound she makes doesn’t sound anything like her. It’s tragic and betrayed. Unhuman.

“Shhhh.” He wraps her skirt around his fist. “You’re alright.”

“Ben—“

“Are you going to touch yourself for me, Scavenger?”

She catches his eye in the mirror and her cheeks glow bright pink. “N-no.” She scoffs, unconvincingly. She tries again to shrug out of his grasp.

He takes her hand and guides it down between her legs. She’s done this before, though she isn’t much good at it. She’s too brusque. Too impatient. He’s seen how she laid awake, wasting water on frustrated tears, trying to wring an underwhelming climax from her tired little body. She always rubs too hard.

“Ben,” She simpers, clutching at the sleeve of the arm locked around her waist. “Ben, I can’t…”

He holds her tighter, silently reassuring her she’s not in the wrong, that he has her, there is no escape, and she’s not weak for wanting this.

It’s all _his_ fault. Her feelings. He is the monster who made her want him.  
He places her fingers and guides her with soft words and patience.

“Ah-ah…” she keeps drawing in short little gulps of air, almost as if she’s going to sneeze. Her brows are furrowed in concentration.

“Not so hard… that’s it. Play with your clit for me.” He arranges her fingers and she nearly shrieks. “That’s it. Good girl.”

He draws her ear between his teeth and bites.

“Ben. _Ben._ ”

“I am going to teach you,” he grunts, clutching her tight and rutting into her lower back, “ _everything_ I know.”

She comes hard in his arms, messy and helpless, crying around the hand over her mouth.

“See?” he says, crushing a closed-mouthed kiss to her hair. “That wasn’t so bad.”

 


	5. A Fool's Paradise

He thinks, as she walks down the aisle, that she could be a little less heroic about the whole affair.

She is wronged, and she is valiant. She has given everything to her cause. Because of her sacrifice— because of her poor, pure heart— her friends will live.

Her jaw is set, her head held high, and she traipses down the marble rotunda with as much grace as if she’d been falling down the stairs. She had warned the coordinator during rehearsal she had no intention of ‘floating.’

Rey is a pretty girl, in a modest, common way, without airs or frills or glamor. He’s always liked the look of her.

But now. _Now_.

She is ethereal. She is breathtaking.

Her dress billows out behind her in luminescent clouds of pearly white, hung from her waist like lily petals, bright as starlight. Her hair is down out of its bizarre little buns, loose and curling around her face. It’s all very poetic, and glaringly symbolic.

She’s not a child anymore. She’s almost twenty.

They are officiated by General Lee, one of his more tolerable officers, who is both mild-mannered and capable of delivering a neutral, inoffensive, politically ambiguous sermon for both sides of the aisle.

Kylo gazes at Rey, while she makes faces at a girl in the front row the entire service. At one point, both devolve into fits of childish laughter, and Lee has to halt his sermon until they have both composed themselves enough to continue.

When they come to the lines “serve and obey,” Rey laughs so obnoxiously even some of her rebel friends cringe.

Kylo waits patiently for her laughter to subside. You will obey me, he tells her smugly over the bond. It’s part of our deal.

That shuts her up.

Two halves of the broken kyber crystal have been ground down and set into rings. His is a heavy golden band, simple and carelessly fashioned. Hers is a narrow, frilly sprig of twisting metal that covers her fourth finger and knuckles. They’re brought on a velvet cushion, and when he tries to put hers on, he has to dodge a blow to his head because—

“— did you honestly deconstruct my saber to make _jewelry_ , you spiteful, entitled, self-aggrandizing _child_?”

She has the grace not to shout this. It’s hissed at him in a malevolent whisper that absolutely everyone hears.

“It wasn’t your saber.” He reminds her gently.

”Am I just going to be without a lightsaber for the rest of my—“

“I’ll get you a new one.” He promises, hastily, in a much less carrying voice. “A better one. You should pick the crystal yourself. It’s tradition.“

“I suppose you mean a red one?” She guffaws. Then, “I am _never_ going to let you touch me.”

He’s certain everyone in the throne room— and possibly the outer rim— heard that last part.

“Never, never.” She stamps her foot for emphasis.

He could throttle her.

Lee pretends to be rifling through pages of scripture in the moments before he catches his bearings and proceeds with the sermon.

They exchange scripted vows and a brief, closed-lipped kiss for the sake of the cameras.

The reception is to be exclusively attended by First Order members, so as the procession leaves the Great Hall, the rebels flock Rey to give her their gifts.

His mother is there. She gives the bride a box of old Aldaaranian jewelry and heirlooms and ignores Ben entirely, red-nosed and misty-eyed. It’s not like her to be so skittish. It’s even less like her to be weepy. He wonders what _she_ has to cry about.

The sweet-eyed rebel with the funny hair is there too. She gives Rey a badly gift-wrapped toolbox and a crushing hug, standing on tiptoe to kiss her.

Only three of his Knights return in time for the ceremony, none of them his favorites; but Kylo can’t be bothered to care too much. Not today. Nothing could upset him today.

They move into the ballroom for the reception and dinner. Rey takes the seat beside his, too stubborn to sit in his lap.

She is a little lady. Rough around the edges, hard-hewn, but a lady through and through.

She eats everything with her hands, but she does it so daintily—picking everything into pieces and eating slowly and carefully. He offers her cake frosting on his fingers, and she dutifully licks it off.

She doesn’t know any better, but Hux— bitter, baffled, scandalized Hux, who watches the exchange with as much disgust as if they were undressing each other— doesn’t need to know that.

Hours after, when the lights have dimmed and half the guests are drunk on champagne, he brushes his hand over her knee beneath the table.

“Aside from you, my knights, and a few of the droids,” he murmurs, tugging her toward him by her leg, “I hate everyone in this room.”

For a moment, she blinks up at him. Then she realizes what he’s saying, and tendrils of fear curl around her consciousness. “I’m still hungry.”

“You’re not.” He says, gently. “You had as much food as I did.”

“Well, I want.. I want to..” She’s frightened, fretful, hands in her hair, twisting her necklace, smoothing her gown anxiously, like a ruffled bird. “I want another drink.”

“You said the champagne made you sick.”

“Well…” she’s stalling, “Well, I—“

He isn’t used to resistance. He isn’t used to disobedience, generally.

“Come with me, Rey.”

Her shoulders slump. Their bond is a live wire, crackling with her excitement and trepidation.

He slips his hands into hers and they steal away from the party.

Their shared quarters are a plain, cool, dimly-lit set of rooms just beneath her own. He leads her there with a hand on the back of her neck, thumb rubbing soothing circles between her tense shoulder blades.

The curtains have been drawn around their bed, the windows open so a warm, smoke-strangled breeze can drift in, and on a table there is champagne in a bucket of melted ice. A makeshift honeymoon suite. The housekeeping droids did their best.

“How do you want me?” She asks, as soon as the door is closed behind them. Haughty. Sarcastically accommodating.

She’s changed tunes since the elevator, trying to sound blasé instead of terrified, as if she knows the first thing about sex. She even gives her hair a girlish little flick as she’s getting into bed.

“Every way there is.” He says.

She holds his gaze for about a second. Then she laughs; head back, thin hair ruffling around her shoulders, her orange blossom mouth split in a brilliant smile. She clutches her sides and flops back onto the mattress. “Alright, Supreme Leader.” She says, and he doesn’t miss the note of hysteria bubbling up in her voice. “Do your worst. Do you mind if I read while you’re at it?” She lifts a plexiglass tablet off the nightstand and wriggles back against the headboard. “I want to finish this article.”

He bristles with anger. “By all means.”

She smirks, and kicks back with her knees splayed, lace slip rucked up to her hips. She ignores him as he undresses.

It takes time. His usual armor is an ordeal to get in and out of, but his wedding regalia has added another layer of chains and jewels and metal plates. Another precious stretch of time is wasted detangling the thorny metal circlet from his hair.

“Do you know what’s going to happen?” He can’t help but be concerned for her. He likes scaring her in moderation, but he doesn’t want her to be afraid of this.

She snickers without detaching her gaze from the screen. “Are you asking if I know what’s going where?”

He ignores this and leans over her, carefully working the pins free of her hair and unwinding ringlets of crystal-encrusted ribbon. She sits still and stares at her tablet, lifting her arms so he can take off her slip, barely breathing when he unwraps her breast band. He sits beside her on the headboard and kisses her temple. He peels off his glove and slips his hand into her underwear.

She does her best not to react. Her dilated eyes are still fixed on her article.

She is so stubborn.

He drags his fingers over her, catching her clit with his nail, then rubbing it soothingly between his fingers.

He lowers his mouth to her ear and whispers, low and filthy, telling her everything he’s going to do to her now that she’s all his.

Her fingers tremble as they work across the screen, scrolling mindlessly, clicking and tapping nonsensically at buttons. Finally, the device slips from her hands and lands with a satisfying crack on the floor beside their bed.

Rey doesn’t seem to notice or care. She is desperate. She is delirious. She doesn’t know what’s happening to her. She almost cries when he takes his hand out from under her skirt. She keens low in her throat, a hurt, betrayed noise, and he grabs her ankles and drags her to the edge of the bed in one swift motion.

He grabs the back of his shirt and pulls it over his head with one hand. “You’ll like this.” He tells her. “Just pull my hair if it’s too much.”

He feels it again; her confusion, her embarrassment, as his shoulders force apart her legs and he lowers his mouth to her sex.

“Oh!” She jackknifes upright, neatly kicking him into the chaise again. Her eyes screw shut and she clutches at his head. Trying to shove him off. Trying to grind down on his face.

Growling against her cunt, he shoves her back into the mattress with one arm splayed over her hips, knocking the wind out of her.

He smacks hard kisses against the soft, supple, petal-pink flesh of her pussy, turning it slick and scarlet. He rubs his face against her, lashing his head side to side with his lips still wrapped around her clit. He sucks her in pulses, with teasing little flicks of his tongue. He scrapes his teeth and lavs madly at her, growling, humming, teasing, biting. He works her into something verging delightfully on hysteria.

“Are you sorry now?” He draws her clit between his teeth and worries it.

Her hands, clasped tight over her mouth, go slack long enough for her to whisper, “What?”

“Are you sorry now that you betrayed me?” He would sound far more threatening without his mouth full, but he can’t seem to stop kissing her there. “I'm not convinced you are. How badly do you want to come, Scavenger?”

She’s quivering, desperately confused. He might as well be asking her to solve complicated mathematical equations. He can see in her glassy eyes she barely remembers her name.

The words come from somewhere deep inside him, some petty, childish corner he did not know existed. “Convince me, Rey.” He snarls. “Give me one good reason I should _ever_ let you come.”

“I’m sorry.” She bucks her hips, and his right arm locks over her again, pinning her flat against the mattress.

“Not good enough.” He gives her inner thigh a vicious bite, then, awash with a sudden flood of sympathy, soothes it with his tongue. “Convince me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I’m sorry for— for turning against you and— and,” she sobs, and he drags his tongue up her center in one long, harsh, excruciating lick. “And— I won’t do it again.”

“Won’t do what?” He licks his lips and looks at her over her heaving chest. “Leave me, or try to kill me?”

“Both. Either. I’m sorry, Ben, I’m so, so sorry—“

He holds her hips down and licks her until she sobs, until she’s so sensitive and overwrought there are tears streaming down her face, making her hair cling, streaking the kohl around her eyes.

“Easy,” He soothes, petting her hair, crawling up to settle above her on his elbows. “There’s my good girl. You took it so well.”

She bobs her head at the praise. He can sense how good it feels to make him proud of her.

He kisses her sticky cheek. “This next part is going to hurt.”

“Okay.” She says, in her smallest voice.

“But I’ll go slow. You’re doing so well, Sweetheart.”

“Yeah.”

“Good girl— big pinch, okay?”

But he doubts she even feels it when he slides in— her eyes are shut and her jaw is slack, hands still splayed out at her sides even though he’s stopped pinning her with the force. He’s not sure she even knows what he’s doing at this point; only that it feels good.

Her lashes flutter sweetly on the first thrust.

By the third, the tension in his spine is unbearable. He holds her to him and grinds in harsh, tight circles, not even thrusting but crushing all his weight down onto her clit.

He cups the back of her head so she’ll stop slamming it against the headboard.

She looks like an angel when she comes, but he feels how it hurts her. How it makes her aching insides rub and twist around him painfully when she clamps down.

“I know, I know.” He coos, his breath hitching as he follows close behind her. It scrambles his senses, hitting him like a seizure. He twitches and buries his face in the pillow so she won’t see his stupid, starstruck, lovesick expression. He braces his arms near her head to take some of his weight off of her.

She’s breathing raggedly. The bond pulses and sings.

“This is where you belong, Rey.” he tells her, and presses his face into her neck. “Just with me. Only me.”

She nods, stupidly. Her eyelids flutter.

He kisses her cheek, soft and white, tacky with tears. “Always and forever.”


	6. Tempt not a Desperate Man

Rey is very pleased with herself.

She sits on their bed with her hands folded in her lap, waiting patiently for him to storm in and throw a tantrum.

He’s been off-world all week for some kind of Supreme-Leader business she doesn’t care to keep track of, and in his absence, she’s been raising all kinds of hell.

For the first month of marriage, before their tour of the galaxy, they didn’t go more than eight hours without having sex. It’s been a bit of a drag, him being gone. Rey is willing to admit that.

For the first few days on her own, she actually missed him. 

More accurately, she missed waking up in the morning without his hand between her legs. Rey _loves_ being fingered. More than she loves candy. More than she loves flying. It’s her favorite thing.

And she hasn’t had it all week.

She doesn’t _exactly_ miss him. Being with Kylo frustrates Rey. She likes structure and routine. But no part of him— his moods, his behaviors, his feelings— follow any discernible pattern. He wakes at a different time every day. Some mornings he’ll force her awake with his hand between her legs. Some days he’ll go down to the kitchens himself and bring her breakfast. Sometimes he’ll ignore her entirely, and go off on his own to study or train.

He’s a restless soul, always tossing and turning, never at peace.

They fight like children. Like siblings. Rey thinks this is what having an older brother must feel like; having someone almost maniacally protective hovering over her one second, and pulling her hair the next. They tussle, play, and squabble. They are childishly competitive. They are the best of friends and the worst of enemies.

And she hates him. She hateshateshates him. It’s a feeling too big for her body. She doesn’t know how so much of this feeling, this pure, undistilled, intense _hatred_ can find space in her heart.

But being his wife isn’t as bad as she thought it would be, she has to admit. It’s not an altogether demanding position.

Mostly, she does as she likes. All there is for her is leisure and fun. Her bedroom is a garden. The other rooms were obviously constructed with her in mind— there is a swimming pool and a series of greenhouses, shelves full of books and games, clothes, a run-down tie-fighter for her to repair, and a whole staff of people to entertain her, like playmates for hire.

She is not allowed in meeting rooms. She is not allowed a comm. She is not allowed in the throne room while he is holding court.

Rey has been scouring the castle for something to do; some kind of task she could undertake, something she can do to help, to give her a sense of purpose, or at least to temper the gluttony of spending all her days lying in a bed of flowers in her personal garden.

As part of her unspoken punishment, Rey is not allowed to partake in any aspect of politics. Ben makes decisions without her and keeps her out of the loop of current events, filtering and monitoring the media she is exposed to.

He may call her his queen. But she is only his wife.

Just this morning, as Rey was feeling especially useless, and thinking all there was to her life anymore was pretty clothes and watercolor paint-sets—

She remembered.

She knows Ben’s account number. He gave it to her. He told her to buy whatever she wants.

So.

For the past three hours, Rey has been giving away money like she’s dying.

Two of her handmaidens, Kaye and Mim, who were archivists at the convent Ben stole them from, have helped her dredge up a list of everyone involved in the six-year campaign against the First Order. There aren’t as many names as Rey would have thought; but the official list is versatile, packed with everything from pilots to combat-medics, to foot soldiers, navigators, politicians and secretaries.

Rebels, every one.

She wires money into an account under the name “Padme Kenobi” for Leia to retrieve, and messages her instructions to distribute it among the living members of the resistance. A kind of pension. A severance package.

Rey is not entirely familiar with how galactic banking operates—she has a tentative grasp on the concept of money in general—but Kaye and Mim walk her through it step-by-step, and by the end of the evening, Rey has given away eleven-million credits. She’s not sure exactly how much this will set his authoritarian empire back— but eleven-million credits feels like a lot.

Rey feels giddy. Maybe a bit nervous. But mostly giddy.

Mere moments later, she hears the soft, crisp swish of the elevator and the clatter of his armor being shed and hitting the floor as he climbs the short spiral staircase that connects his room with hers.

She doesn’t wait for him to speak. He’s barely over the threshold when she makes the announcement.

“I have spent. Eleven. million. credits.” She says.

He stares at her. Runs a hand over his rumpled hair, his helmet clutched in one hand. “Whatever on?”

He goes on undressing. First the chest plate, arm guards, and cape. Then his tunic and undershirt. He glances back over his shoulder at her. “Well? What did you spend eleven million credits on?”

It takes Rey a moment to recover. She had expected unchecked rage. Possibly violence. She hadn't prepared for this reaction.

“I have given it to your mother.” She says, victoriously. “For the Resistance veterans.”

“Ah.” He says. His voice is chilly, but not especially angry. He strips off his gloves and throws them on the floor, like someone who’s lived his whole life with droids to pick up after him.

He crosses over to where she’s kneeling on the bed. “And is that all you've bought?”

She blanches. “Yes. But it was eleven million—“

He groans, so loudly, suddenly, and dramatically she breaks off mid-sentence. It’s almost playful, keenly adolescent, and utterly uncharacteristic of him.

“I gave you that information for a reason.” He grouses. “Won’t you forget about the war for a while? It’s been dragging on for years. But now, thanks to you and your _noble sacrifice_ —“ He says the words like they’re filthy, “—the galaxy is at peace. And there are worlds full of pretty things for you to buy, a million ways to spend your money, and still you cling to a rag-tag team of mercenaries who have already forgotten you.”

“They haven’t!” She jerks up onto her knees.

“You may spend your allowance however you like,” He tells her, sternly, as if she’s a petulant child.  “But you won’t give any more of it to them.”

She swallows. The words start to sink in. “My…” her stomach sinks. “My allowance?”

“Darling.” He says, fond and exasperated. “Do you think I’d trust you with a joint account?”

She gapes up at him, totally lost for words. 

“It was a clever idea, Precious, hitting me in the budget— but it simply won’t work. You won’t be able to spend it fast enough.”

Rey stares at him. She can’t fathom that sort of wealth. It makes her curious. And giddy. And sick.

Ben braces his arms by her sides, making her dip lower on the mattress. 

“Now.” He smiles, faintly, in that way that’s barely-there. “I’ve missed you. Give me a kiss.”

 

“—that the entire system is rioting, water shortages cropping up in every sector—“

Ben lounges in his throne, the heel of one boot slung over the armrest, eyes fixed blankly on the General as he goes on about… something. He should probably be listening. Truthfully, he’s not sure what these bi-weekly reports are even for.

Hux drones on. “—well as numerous reports of the Resistance insignia emblazoned on first order bases across the galaxy—“

“Why doesn’t she ever read her books?” Kylo wonders aloud.

Hux doesn’t break his stride. He just plows on with his presentation. With an irritable crackle of paper, his gloved hand turns over the next page of his report, and he goes on reading.“—would of course be prepared to send aid to manage the uprisings… however, resources are limited due to the recent death of three commanders and the destruction of the better half of a star cruiser—”

“Why doesn’t she play with—“ Kylo clears his throat. “Why doesn’t she ever fix that tie fighter I gave her? I thought she’d like it.”

“—all of which can likely be attributed to your… outbursts.”

“Armitage,” says Kylo, wrenching the cluster of papers from Hux’s grasp with a flick of his wrist. “Do you think Rey is happy here?”

“Supreme Leader.” Hux has a supernatural ability to make the words sound both inordinately reverent and at the same time, cuttingly sarcastic. “We are discussing uprisings. On _several_ core planets, including Coruscant. It is becoming increasingly evident that your regime is perceived by the masses as neither stable nor legitimate, and if we do not establish some semblance of authority within—”

“I’ll deal with it later.” says Kylo, breezily. “Should I get her more flowers?”

“I think you should delegate some of your responsibilities.” says Hux, with an expression of deepest concern. “So you aren’t so spread thin. Then these issues could receive the attention they require.”

Kylo knows what Hux is implying without having to ask. The same way he knows implicitly that Hux sits in his throne when he’s off-planet.

But it gives him an idea.

“She’s bored.” it strikes him like a clap of lightning. “She doesn’t feel like she’s pulling her weight and it bothers her.” he feels the corner of his lips hitch up in that way it only does when he’s with Rey. “I could give her more responsibility. Maybe a few little tasks.”

If Hux didn’t always look so wretched, Kylo would have sworn his face had fallen in disappointment. “Yes, of course.” he says, tersely. “I’m sure that will make the _girl_ feel very included.”

“It will.” Kylo nods to himself, feeling secure in his decision and comfortable, for the first time since his wedding, that this will right everything. “Good idea, General.”

Hux grumbles miserably. “I live to serve.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this one was plot-heavy, guys. Hang in there. ;)


	7. Teach the Torches to Burn Bright

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little raunchy, this one. And a bit rough. There's name-calling. Just as a heads up.

Rey is happy here with him.

She _is_.

He doesn’t care what Hux says. 

Hux has never seen the pretty, scrunched-up expression on her face when he licks between her legs. 

Hux doesn’t know about the pleased little humming noises she makes when he rubs her back to help her sleep. Or how they read together. How they play and eat and fight together. The talks they have. The time they spend.

Hux doesn’t know anything. Kylo’s keeping him on mostly for appearances at this point.

He knows what they all say about him. All his soldiers and generals— even some of his Knights. How love has driven him mad. How he’s going to kill the poor little girl one of these days. How sorry they are for her. How mortified, on her behalf.

They figure even a Jedi doesn’t deserve his love.

If only they could see the _poor girl_ now.

“Harder.” she wails, pulling his hands to her hips to help her bounce faster. “Harder, please?”

Kylo sits up and drags them back against the headboard. He braces his heels on the mattress and holds her suspended while he fucks up into her, jerking his hips in that harsh, irregular pace she likes.

Rey wrenches at his hair. He takes the hint and bows his head to her chest. “Talk to me.” she orders.

“You’re beautiful.” he slurs, with his mouth full.

She wriggles her hips, and the whole world tilts. “Not like that!” she snaps. “Talk to me!”

Kylo pushes her off his lap. She hits the covers with a soft thud and a week little mew. He flips her over with one hand on her leg and hikes her hips up with one arm wrapped beneath her stomach.

“Head down.” he snarls, and he shoves her face into the mattress. “You don’t need to be such a needy little whore every time you want attention.”

She giggles girlishly at that, as if he’s just given her an endearing compliment.

For the first few weeks, she was a shrinking violet. She had to be coaxed and praised and babied into taking her clothes off, and even then, she would close her eyes the whole time.

Now she’s shameless.

She loves when he pulls her hair. She loves when he wears his gloves. She loves the anticipation of his nails on her hips and the harsh, rough drag of his cock inside her.

She never, never likes it slow. She kicks him when he takes too long.

“Dragging his feet,” she calls it.

Ben struggles to keep up. She’s young and insatiable. He can’t seem to fuck her hard enough. And she never wants to hear how much he loves her.

He waits till she’s settled down some. He strokes his hands up and down the backs of her thighs and talks to her, low and degrading and filthy. He calls her a whore again. His whore. He waits till she’s begging and crying and her cunt is so red and swollen it looks painful. Then he drags her back onto his face with his hands on her hips and licks and licks and _licks_ , rough, clumsy, rasping strokes of his long tongue that force her over the edge before she’s ready.

He doesn’t stop when she comes. He savors her, in long, languid, almost disinterested laps, like ice cream on a summer day.

When he finally pulls away and hilts himself inside her, it feels like mercy.

 

 

Rey has her own committee now, and a slew of admin working under her. She even has a secretary. There’s a very narrow selection of professional clothes in her closet beside all the evening gowns. She wants to implement a galaxy-wide public elementary education system, and, as always, he is accommodating and indulgent.

He lets her have her little causes.

They go on that tour of the galaxy he’s been promising, and for the entire trip, Rey forgets to act like she’s not enjoying herself.

Per her request, it is less conspicuous than his advisors would have it. But it’s also much more fun.

Fun. He’d forgotten the feeling entirely. It was nearly impossible to conceptualize anymore. Being young. Doing things for the sake of them, and not to any purpose.

He and Rey start their ‘tour’ on Canto Byte and work their way up.

Kylo is more comfortable on the slower planets; sleepy, peaceful, small-town sort of worlds where livestock outnumber people and there’s no one around to recognize him.

But Rey likes the city planets best. The wilder the better. She likes the chaos of too many cultures mashed together, of bar-fights spilling out onto the street, the raucous whirl of prettily-packaged disorder. She likes the noise.

And he likes her. So they visit the cities and steer clear of everything quiet.

They spend nights in expensive hotels and dine with vapid, beautiful socialites. They drink champagne straight from the bottle, and Rey has ice with everything. Rey loves ice. She loves lying in the hotel bed between crisp, cool sheets and having blocks of it whisked in by droids to put in her drinks. To her, that is the height of luxury. Everything cold is decadent.

They stay out too late in cultural districts on glittery golden planets, roving over the galaxy aimlessly. 

Their people love her. He knew they would.

In the end, it’s more of a road trip than victory tour.

She doesn’t try to run. Not once. Because she’s a good girl, and she knows better.

They come home, and it’s paradise. She settles back into her volcanic prison without complaint. 

They train together and she sits on his lap at mealtimes. They read from the same book in the evenings. When he’s feeling overwhelmed, they lie down in their bed with his head on her chest, and she strokes his hair. It’s the best thing in the world. He likes it better than sex.

He’s not sure Rey does.

He’s not sure Rey likes much about him, besides the sex.

But she’s here, and she’s home, and she lets him touch her.

And for a while, it works.

For a while, he thinks it’s enough.

And then.

And then.

He walks into her bedroom to the sight of a six-inch holovid of FN-2187.

Rey’s knees are tucked up girlishly under her nightgown, her chin resting on her balled up fists, and she’s staring at the stormtrooper’s handsome profile with tears rolling down into her smiling mouth. She’s mid-laugh when she looks up and sees him in the doorway. The traitor is caught off mid-sentence. 

She fumbles to turn off the holovid. She isn’t quick enough. There is a crackle of static, a gust of blue pixels scattering apart into nothing.

He gave her a separate set of rooms for a reason. A few reasons, really. 

He wanted to give her a choice. 

And, even if she made the right choice, and decided to share his bed, he wanted to give her some space. He knew the transition was going to be hard on her, and it would be good for her to have her own room; a place to be without him, where she could store all her things and study and be idle, a place that was all her own.

She hasn’t had much that’s just hers.

Rey falls forward over the bedspread to shield his view of the holovid. Sprawled on her elbows, staring at the covers, she looks so pitiful and afraid he almost forgets his anger.

Almost.

“Who gave you this?” he asks, calmly.

She goes white. He watches all the color drain from her pretty face.

Kylo looms over her with the ghost of the traitor’s smile still burned on the backs of his eyes.

She senses his anger, as she always does, but he feels her spike of anxiety when she picks up on something else—

He wants to hurt her. Wants to hurt her badly. He feels as though right now, he could put her through the glass table at her bedside. He could crack the wall with her head. His hand twitches toward his saber.

He’s projecting, he realizes, a moment too late.

By the time the fog of rage has cleared, Rey is staring up at him with wide, wet, beautiful eyes. And she’s trembling.

He feels the intricacies of her betrayal, senses her hurt confusion, her disbelief— that the same hands that touched her so gently only hours earlier were just now itching to be around her neck.

Hours earlier, Ben had been the safest thing in the world. He would hurt anyone, his own father, even, but not her, never her, because _she_ is the limit, she is where he draws the line, she is the only exception—

“Don’t!” She shrieks, clawing at the empty space better their foreheads. “I don’t want, I don’t want—“

She tries to slip away, but he drags her back into his arms, forcing her into a crushing embrace.

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you.” She spits out. “I don’t.”

She kicks and flails. He holds her tighter.

“I didn’t— I didn’t mean it.”

“Let go of me.”

And all over again, he wants to shake her. Why is she crying? What right does she have to be miserable? She’s only ever wronged him. He’s only ever given her everything he has.

He hears his uncle’s voice in his head.

“Let her go. She doesn’t belong to you.”

She needs me, he casts back into the void. And she does. Rey needs someone to show her her place in all of this. Someone who won’t exploit her or use her as a human shield.

Ben Solo takes care of what is his.

They fall together over the rumpled bed covers in a cruel imitation of the way they sleep-- her head tucked against his sternum and his arms locked around her waist.

“Hush.” he doesn’t know if he’s soothing or scolding. She doesn’t listen, either way. She only cries harder.

“I hate you!” she shrieks, and tries to kick her way free. “You’re the worst thing that ever happened to me and I hate you!”

For a moment, they tussle like children. It’s petty and ruthless. He pulls her hair and she beats at his shoulders with balled fists. He crushes her against the mattress and pins her hands beside her head.

He jerks her, once, very hard. “Stop fighting me.”

“Never.”

“You’ve lost!” he shouts. “It’s over!”

She goes still. Sinks back against the pillows, quietly seething.

He lowers his lips to his ear. “You are not my equal.” He grits out. “You lost that right long ago. Now the best you can hope for is to be my prize. Because I have won. Do you understand?” he gives her another little jerk. “I have shown you more mercy than you would have ever shown me, and every time you draw breath, it is only because _I allow it._ Do you understand?”

He feels a surge of anger spike across their bond, hot enough to burn his senses raw, make his vision go black at the edges.

Hers is a fury that rivals his own.

“I think you’d better kill me now.” she tells him. “Because if you don’t, I promise I’m going to be free of  you— one way or another.”

The words sting, like he never thought they would. He thought it would be enough just to have her. To keep her near, where he could pet and watch and tend to her. But now he knows. He needs more.

He bites her neck, hard and fast. Rey wrenches her wrists free of his grasp and pulls up her nightgown.

They fumble, fingers twisting together fighting to unfasten his pants and get him inside her.

The first thrust hurts her. Kylo doesn’t care. He doesn’t.

“Harder.”

“Shut up.”

She bucks her hips, and he sees white.

It is fast, and vicious. Very nearly violent.

“Don’t you dare,” he pants, setting a brutal, selfish pace, “ever leave me. Don’t you dare.”

“I wasn’t—“

He jerks his hips hard enough she’ll feel him in her stomach. Her lies get stuck in her throat.

“Ever.” He snarls. “If I _ever_ catch you again—“

She wrenches one of her hands out of his grip and shoves it down between their bodies. He drags it back up and pins her.

“You vicious. Little. Bitch.” His throat aches. He bows his head to her collarbone so he doesn’t have to look her in the eyes. “Why do you do this to me? Aren’t I good to you?” He drops his full weight into her and drags his hips in a frantic, uneven circle, rubbing her clit, pressing her into the sheets. “Don’t I give you everything you want?”

“No.” She manages, between desperate gulps of air that sound like sobs. “I—only—want—“ here, she looks him dead in the eye, “to be free of you.”

He lets out a menacing, animal noise and presses her face to the side, forcibly breaking eye contact. He bows his head to her shoulder and works himself to a mediocre climax.

She doesn’t come. She isn’t going to. He’s already decided.

Rey sort of whines at him, when he collapses on her chest. She swats at his shoulders. Angry. Entitled. Like they had a deal, and he’s not holding up his end.

“Ben.” She says, in that breathy, little-girl voice that tugs at his heart. “Beeeenny.”

He lets out a noise that was meant to be a growl, but comes out more of a sigh. “You’re a little brat, you know that?” And he braces his arms near her head and dutifully arches his back, pressing his pubic bone into her clit, not letting up until she yowls like a cat and comes triumphantly.

“Why did it have to be you?” He says, as she’s coming down. He strokes her hair and wishes he could throw her against the wall. "I wish I could love someone else. Someone with half a heart."

“You poor thing.” She mumbles, dreamily. Rey is still winded, and in this rare moment of silence and post-orgasmic bliss, he undoes all his hard work— needy, stupid, fanciful child that he is.

“I love you, Rey. I love you so much.” He blubbers. “Don’t go away, please don’t go away from me.”

“You’re a selfish bastard and I hate you.” She says primly. “Now get off me."

He does. Without having to be told twice. Accommodating. Indulgent.

His prisoner climbs out of bed to get ready for her committee meeting.


	8. cut him out in little stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rey goes on a hunger strike. Kylo withholds sex. Enjoy.

“Won’t you at least have a _little_ to eat, love?” He pleads, holding out a spoonful of something whipped and sparkling with sugar. “It’s called marzipan. It’s sweet.”

“No thank you.” She turns her head.

The table in front of her is laden with all her suppertime favorites, as well as sweets, teas, and even champagne.

She’s hungry like only she knows how to be.

It’s a vindictive little thrill, watching him pace the room and wring his hand as he struggles to resolve this. Hitting him the budget was one thing-- but she knows she’ll win this time.

Ben has threatened, bartered, begged, cajoled, and commanded. But nothing works. She will not have a bite.

Since his episode last night, she’s come to her senses. This man is not her lover. This man is not her friend. At his power-warped core is a spiteful, tantruming man-child, whose obsession with her has reached a fever-pitch of paranoid lunacy.

It doesn’t matter how wet he makes her. It doesn’t matter how hard he makes her come.  
She won’t be his pet any longer. She’s getting her way if it kills her.

“Won’t you have treacle? Or bacon?” He says, in a sugary voice that does nothing to sway her.  “I’ll get you whatever you want, angel. Please. You have to eat something.”

She can hear it in his voice. Ben is alarmed for her. If he knew how to be hungry, he would know that missing a days worth of meals is nothing. And she’ll be able to keep this up for a while— likely longer than he expects.

She could do this for days. She’s not even dizzy yet.

Rey stands up from the table and shakes out her dress; a long, filmy jumble of pleated blue crepe, scattered with gossamer stars.

Ben stands with her. “How about some caf?” He wheedles. “Or some juice?”

“I’m going to bed.”

“Already?”

“I’m tired.”

“That’s because you haven’t eaten.” He says.

He trots after her like a devoted pet as she walks out of the dining room.

He has the day off. He’s delegated all his responsibilities to Hux— who is no doubt thrilled at the chance to play emperor for the day. Rey feels sorry for the servants, but even sorrier for herself. She can handle Ben in moderation. But having all his attention focused on her— mentally, emotionally, and sexually— can be draining.

Well. Maybe not sexually.

But they’ve only had sex once today. At least, she thinks it counts as one time. She came thrice, once on his fingers, twice on his cock. But they never actually let up. Rey was sore just thinking about it.

But Ben has sworn up and down he’s not going to make her come again until she eats something.

Which may weaken her resolve more than she cares to admit.

He wanted to strike her. _Her. ___

__He _adores_ her. She’s the center of his universe. She’s Rey. His Scavenger. His little Jedi. How could he have forgotten?_ _

__The knowledge hurts more than the pang in her abdomen. It hurts more than it should._ _

__But why should she expect anything else from him? He kidnapped her. Hurt her friends. Threatened her. Kidnapped her again._ _

__“I’m sorry,” he says, shoes clapping along the hallway as he scampers after her. “About last night. I’m sorry.”_ _

__“I’ll bet you are.” says Rey. She wants to be free of him. She wants fresh air and sunlight. She wants Poe. She wants Finn. She wants to go home._ _

__“I want to lie down.” she snaps over her shoulder. “Don’t follow me.”_ _

__He steps into the elevator with her. “Rey.” he says. “I’m sorry.”_ _

__Rey moans and rolls her eyes, feeling all the blood rush to her feet as the elevator ratchets skywards. There’s the harsh, chilly grind of gears turning as and the doors wind open to their rooms._ _

__He’s still nagging her. Something about loving her unconditionally._ _

__Rey doesn’t hear him. She doesn’t care._ _

__She really only feels anything anymore when he fucks her._ _

__Fortunately, he fucks her all the time. He’s a fanatic about giving her whatever she wants, and it’s the only thing she wants from him. Besides maybe her freedom._ _

__Sex. Harsh and ruthless and lovely and deep-- so unbelievable deep, he actually _can’t_ get the whole way in. But they’ve tried. Force, have they tried._ _

__Sex in their bed, on the floor, on conference room tables, on the rotunda, in the greenhouse._ _

__On the throne. _So many times_ on the throne._ _

__“It just made me angry,” he’s explaining, taking care not to trip on her long, fussy skirt as she bustles up the spiral staircase that leads up to her room. Hers. The one with the twin bed with no room for him in it. “You were trying to leave and I’ve been so good to you, Rey, you just made me angry--”_ _

__She almost keels over with laughter. She grips the top of the stairway railing for support. “You’re good to me?” the words spill out in a strangled wisp of breath._ _

__“Yes.” he doesn’t blink. He’s a step below her, but she still has to tilt her head to look him in the eye._ _

__The conviction, the sincerity-- the sheer caliber of delusion-- stops Rey dead in her tracks._ _

__“If, by some miracle, you and your Resistance had won the war,” he says, “What do you think would have happened to me?”_ _

__“I’d have killed you.” she says, almost reflexively. “Or, if _by some miracle_ , you had lived, you would have stood trial.”_ _

__“And then?”_ _

__“You’d have been executed, probably.”_ _

__He lets her words hang in the air._ _

__Rey turns and storms up to her room. She was wrong. This was too much. She is feeling dizzy. It’s all this heavy food. She’s gotten used to three square meals a day, with mid-day tea and bedtime snacks and caf with Kylo in the mornings on the balcony--_ _

__“Rey,” says Kylo. The dark, broad breadth of him fills the doorway._ _

__She sits on her bed, skirt fanned out into a perfect half-moon of wrinkled blue crepe on the coverlet._ _

__“Rey,” he says again, “I didn’t hurt you. I didn’t have you executed. I didn’t hurt your friends. I’ve stopped _expanding my empire.__ _

__He sits down next to her, crushing the fabric of her gown like a butterfly’s wing. He takes her little hand in his and unfolds it, tugging it to his mouth and pressing a kiss to her palm._ _

__The skin he kisses is calloused. Not from the grips of her saber or scourging through burning sand for scraps. From gardening._ _

___Gardening._ _ _

__“All I ask is that you stay with me.” he says. His voice is taut. “Stay with me, and don’t try to get away. That’s not so awful, is it?”_ _

__Rey falls back against the mattress and stares at the ceiling. Tears well at the backs of her eyes. She doesn’t know why. Frustration, maybe. Or boredom._ _

__“Rey.” he says quietly. He lies down next to her, too big to fit horizontal on the little bed. His legs hang awkwardly off the side. “Why do you have to fight me so hard? Why won’t you just let me love you?”_ _

__A bitter silence settles. It goes down her throat like tar and tussin. And Rey shouldn’t care, but she hates how heartless he makes her sound. Like she’s the villain in all this. She’s the reason she isn’t happy._ _

__“Why won’t you eat?” he mumbles. His words slur together at the end a bit. Like he’s whimpering._ _

__Kylo Ren; master of the Knights of Ren. The most powerful man in the universe. The Supreme Leader. Evil incarnate._ _

__And a simpering child for her._ _

__The thought sends a little thrill up her spine._ _

__It’s not enough. It’s like the little packet of soda crackers she stashed in the front of her dress when he wasn’t looking. It will only keep her going for so long._ _

__“I’m sad, Ben.” she says._ _

__“You’re not angry?”_ _

__“Yes.” she says. “I’m angry. But it’s more than that. I’m…” she trails off. He’s looking at her like he did when they first touched through the bond. Intense. Needy. “I just don’t feel like eating. I’m sad.”_ _

__“You’re sick?” his features twist in an expression of deepest concern. “I can get you dry toast and ice chips. Would that make you feel better?”_ _

__She doesn’t answer. Outside their open window, smoke clouds drag across a sky like a flat plane of slate. The heat is searing. Sickening._ _

__“Just have a bit of toast.” he says, cajolingly. “I’ll make you come once for every mouthful you swallow.”_ _

__There’s a tempting offer. They’ll have to get back to that._ _

__“Do you think--” Rey’s voice breaks a little. “Do you think… if we’d met, before you went to the dark side… could we have been friends?”_ _

__She feels his eyes on her. The bond quivers. “We are friends.” he says, softly. “Aren’t we?”_ _

__Oh. Oh, this is too much._ _

__“I mean we--we--we read together.” he stammers. “And we go places together. We talk. I know all about you. I pay attention to you. Isn’t that…” his lips tremble. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”_ _

__“Yes,” she says, hastily, because it’s all too pitiful. “Yes, Ben, we’re friends.”_ _

__“I mean-- that’s what love is,” he says. He’s still dotting kisses along the curve of her thumb, nervously, now, almost compulsively. “Paying attention.”_ _

__He’s so pitiful. Almost sweet._ _

__A flicker of memory prickles behind her eyelids, swimming in and out of focus like a picture on the other side of a rain-blurred windowpane._ _

__“--what are we going to do about Ben--”_ _

__“--knew this might happen--”_ _

__“--considering seeing a psychologist--”_ _

__“--find out he’s bullying the other kids--”_ _

__“--always a risk--”_ _

__A man and a woman who knew everything. A man and a woman who were afraid of him. Who must be right to be afraid of him, must have some reason, these beloved, omniscient, infallible fixtures of his life that knew from the start there was something unnervingly _wrong_ with him._ _

__He’s so lonely._ _

__Rey considers saying it out loud, just to even up the score. But he looks so distraught she manages to hold herself back._ _

__Kylo Ren is lonely. He needs to love something desperately, and have that thing desperately love him in return. Something to worship. Something to call him God._ _

__Distractedly, Rey thinks to herself, what the man needs is children. Lots of them, and fast._ _

__Her stomach twists with hunger, and she reminds the Force silently that she is not up to the job._ _

__“No, Benny.” says Rey, suddenly, shocked at her own tenderness. She touches his face, grazing away an errant curl of baby-soft hair. He turns his cheek into her palm. “Love is _listening_. That’s all. Listening.”_ _


	9. o happy dagger

“Eat your toast.”

Rey meets his eyes over the stretch of silken blue bedspread between them. She’s lying on her stomach with her chin on her fists, resolutely ignoring the two perfect triangles of hearty toast, slathered with butter, that have been set before her.

She had forgone her hunger strike weeks ago, when the blue hollows beneath Kylo’s eyes had turned comically bright, and all his pleading and nagging had become more of a nuisance than the ache in her stomach.

Rey had wrung him dry in those first three days, and in turn, he’d annoyed her out of her mind.

So she’d snapped her fingers, and Kylo obligingly pulled out of a newly-invaded world he had been attempting to overtake.

Thing is, Rey can’t remember the name of the world. She’s getting a little vague and unfocused. She’s tired all the time. Her whims are faint and fleeting. She never knows what she wants.  
And she’s been sleeping a lot.

She wants to go home.

She’s tried asking Kylo. And she asks so prettily.

“Can Poe and Finn visit?” cuddled up in his lap with a book on her knees.

“Can _I_ visit Poe and Finn?” while he feeds her grapes and plays with her hair. 

“Can I go home?” around a mouthful of his cock.

The answer is never yes.

Since her short-lived hunger strike, Kylo takes Rey far more seriously. But there are a few things he won’t budge on.

She takes a bite of toast and studies him; his long, hawkish profile, the almost endearing bruises beneath his eyes, the asymmetry. He’s so distinct looking. She’s sure there’s no one who looks just like him.

And yet.

Kylo Ren doesn’t feel like a real person to her. He feels flat; like a shadow. A dark, soulless patch of nothingness. No substance, no tangible quality— just an absence of light.

Just a tempest of emotion and a vortex of need.

Sometimes, when he was acting especially calm, she would wonder.

Did Ben Solo— not the light, but the person— still exist? And— here was the question that really interested her— had he ever existed?

Or has he always been like this? Was there any nuance to him, apart from the layers of anger and entitlement that choked his so poetically tortured soul?

Had Ben Solo ever laughed? Had he ever run late in the mornings? Did he have hobbies? Did he have friends? Did he hold doors for people?

“What's something I don’t know about you?” Asks Rey, before dutifully opening her mouth to accept the point of buttered toast he pressed between her lips. She chews and swallows.

For a moment, Kylo eyes her suspiciously.

“I’m seriously asking.” says Rey. “I want to know.”

“Well... I used to do calligraphy.” He says, easing a bit of toast between her lips.

It feels like eating sand. She had tried that once, when she was very, very hungry. It hadn’t worked. “What’s that?” She asks.

“Get me one of your books and I’ll show you.”

She hands him the little leather stationary kit on her bookshelf, one that had been included in the mountain of gifts he’d given her on their wedding day.

He takes her pen and uncaps it. “Rey.” He spells as he writes.  
His hand moved expertly across the paper, moving the ordinary blue ink in whorls and loops and lacy little frills. It seemed hardly real.

When he finishes, he sticks the pen back into the cap between his teeth and holds up the notebook for her.

Rey’s throat feels suddenly very tight.

She looks up at him. “Will you fuck me?”

“Finish your toast.”

She forces down the last few bites and stares up at him expectantly.

“Take off your clothes and lie down.” He says, peeling off his gloves.

Rey strips off her nightgown and lays flat on her back. He never lets her be on top anymore. He says she doesn’t have the energy to spare.

“Tell me more things about you.” She says. Maybe it’s the lightheadedness from hunger. Or boredom. Or maybe she’s finally going crazy.

Kylo grumbles as he settles overtop her and shoves down the front of his trousers. “Later.” He says, irritated.

She absentmindedly runs her nails through the dense, silky hair at the back of his neck. “Just do it.” She says. She’d been getting bolder with her commands, recently. “Tell me about Ben Solo.”

He grumbles something as he takes himself in hand and presses slowly into her.

“Hey.” she snaps.

“I don’t know,” he presses his forehead against the pillow beside her head. “I read a lot.”

Rey arches and sighs. “What did you read?”

His hips jerk mechanically, his cock rasping in and out of her, scraping her insides, tugging gently on that sweet spot with every upstroke. “I don’t know.” he says again. “History. Poetry. My textbooks. I studied a lot.”

“Hm.” Rey hums, satisfied. “I’d like to have known you then.”

“No, you wouldn’t have.” he says, forcefully.

Kylo reaches down and grabs her legs, swinging them up and out and notching them in the crooks of his elbows. He started pushing in and out of her in that jerky, unpredictable rhythm that always shuts her up. The hard pane of bone above his cock batters against her clit, and Rey lets her head fall back and her muscles relax and just lies there and _takes_ it.

She’s getting listless. Her whims are changeable and fleeting. She’s started trailing off in the middle of sentences and forgetting why she’s walked into rooms.

He’s getting worse.

The gears of the First Order have ground to a shocking halt. Hux is beside himself. The Resistance is rallying.

He’s feeds her toast and begs for her love while his empire crumbles into the sea.

 

* * *

 

“Rey.”

Someone is shaking her awake.

“Rey, Sweetheart. Wake up.”

Rey swipes at the source of the noise and burrows deeper into her pillow.

“You need to get up.”

“Is there a fire?”

“Wake up right now.” She feels an incessant point of pressure way at the back of her mind, where the bond connects them; not prodding or hurting, but pestering her into consciousness.

Slowly, resignedly, Rey eases her eyes open and presses up onto her elbows to see what all the fuss is about. “Alright, Your Excellency,” She yawns. “What’s so important you had to wake—“

He’s on her like wildfire.

Rey falls back against the pillows with a muffled little mewl of surprise and pleasure. She’s still disgruntled at having been woken up. But if he had to wake her, this isn’t the worst thing for.

He crushes her against the mattress with nothing but his height and weight, pawing at her nightgown like it’s some mysterious barrier that’s only just appeared between them. She shushes him and guides his hands to the back, helps him unlace it and drag it over her head.

He is frantic. He is insatiable. He pins her to their marital bed and pushes into her all at once and entirely too fast, bucking his hips at a jerking, irregular pace. Usually, when he thrusts, his whole body moves. His shoulders hunch and his chest moves above her so she can see every muscle ripple and clench. But now his head is buried in her neck, his grip making her wrists ache, while he shoves inside her over and over again. It’s a clumsy, adolescent slap of skin on skin, as if he can’t fuck her fast enough, as if he’s a man starved.

He lowers his mouth to her breasts and sucks the left one into his mouth. Rey keens, trying to wriggle out of his grasp, but his thumbs dig warningly into her wrists. He moans around his tiny, modest mouthful.

“Kylo.” She arches, and his growl makes her nipple rub against the roof of his mouth. He lets her go with a wet, sticky pop, and latches onto her other breast. They settle into a jerky rhythm— his sporadic thrusts, paired with her mismatched gasps of nervous breath and his harsh, steady suckling.

She starts to sit up, and he manhandles her back against the rumpled bed covers. Flips her over. Presses a heavy hand to the small of her back. “Don’t come.” He orders, in a breathless, alien voice. “Not till I say you can.”

And she likely had some clever response to that in the chamber, ready to shoot off at a seconds notice, but then he’s driving back into her and all she can do is clutch at the fitted sheet and hang on for dear life.

It ends quickly, and he collapses on her back with something like a sob.

If Rey could purr, she would. “That was lovely.” She says, stretching out like a starfish, happily mussing her hair as she rolls her head side to side. “What brought that on? Am I dying?”

“Get up.”

“I am up. Thanks to—“

“Get dressed. Right now.”

“What are you on about?” Rey hauls herself up into a sitting position to see Ben standing by the doorway, fully clothed, with a little blue rucksack in-hand. Her little blue rucksack. The one with the star-shaped clasps and the built-in container for tools that was apart of the mountain of gifts he gave her on their wedding.

She blinks up at him. “Are we going somewhere?”

“Yes. Get dressed. I’ve already gotten your things.”

“Are we in trouble?”

“Just move.”

Rey obeys, for what is perhaps the first time in their entire marriage.

Ben stands by the door and waits, leg jerking impatiently as Rey drags a day dress over her head and shuffles around in the dark, looking for her shoes.

He leads her down the stairs, holding the skirt of her dressing gown up so she doesn't trip. They take the elevator down to the ground floor.

He steers her through the vestibule, along the veranda, through the unlocked, unguarded, ceiling-high doors that bar the castle.

There, on the landing bay, like a child’s bike strewn in the grass, is a shuttle.

It’s compact. Only big enough for one person. The hatch is open.

“Are we going somewhere?” Rey asks again. She looks him up and down. He isn’t carrying anything. She feels a prickle of irritation and anxiety. “What is it? Is it Hux? Is he planning a coup?”

“Yes,” says Kylo, with a distracted flick of his head. “But that’s not... “ his voice breaks. “That’s not why. All you have to do is get out of the atmosphere. Your friend, Tico… she’s waiting for you just outside the planet’s orbit. She’ll pick you up and take you back to the resistance. He hesitates. “This was always yours.” he takes off his ring and presses it into her hand. “Now you have both pieces. You can make your saber whole again.”

“What?” The world before her is blurring, like watercolor paints running together. Her cheeks feel wet. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m letting you go.” His eyes are wet too. But he isn’t looking at her. He’s looking at the escape pod.

“What-- you can’t--” Rey cuts herself off. She brings herself up to her full height, the way she does when she’s trying to dissuade him from invading something. “And then what?” she demands, haughtily. “What the _hell_ am I supposed to do then?”

“Run and hide.” He snarls, and his face changes under a veil of tears and sentiment. “Run and hide, little girl, because I am _going_ to change my mind. And for your own good, you and your friends better be at least halfway across the galaxy when I do.”

“Ben.” she feels lightheaded. Almost faint. “You… you aren’t serious.”

He can’t be. This is a trick. He’s going to test her, see if she’s willing to leave him, and then he’ll…

What? What possibly could be his angle? He knows she would leave him if she could. He doesn’t like to think about it.

“But I lost.” She says, hating how breathless she sounds. “I’m your prize. Remember?”

He just shakes his head. He looks paler than parchment, his dark eyes red with tears.

“Ben.” She’s begging now. For what, she doesn’t know. “Ben, I—“

“Don’t.” Twin tear tracks sweep down his long, lovely face, and he scrapes them away with one hand.

He looks nothing like Supreme Leader, nothing like the leader of the Knights of Ren, in baggy clothes with no saber or mask, his hair fluffed up with sleep.  
He cannot put his heart into his mouth, but she feels him say it through the bond.

He’s not sure how to be selfless. It is not in his nature. But he’s trying. For her. He understands now that loving her doesn’t mean sinking his claws in and not letting go.

She belongs with him. He’s certain of it. But she can’t belong to him. It will destroy her.

She takes a step closer and rises on her toes to press her lips to his. It’s long, slow, and awkward, nothing more than a childlike knock of their teeth. She sinks back onto her heels and chews at her lip, staring up at him.

He swallows, hard. “Go.” He says.

Rey stares up at him. Slowly, almost unconsciously, she shakes her head.

His anger flares and stings, crackling like a bolt of lightning across the bond. “Go.” He snarls. “Go _now_. Before I change my mind.”

She flees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! One more chapter ;)


	10. violent delights have violent ends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, do you guys know that scene in Parks & Rec where Ron and Tammy II are screaming at each other in front of the diner? I feel like that **perfectly** characterizes Kylo and Rey’s whole relationship. Twisted, damaging, toxic, entertaining, and a disaster for everyone involved-- but they can’t seem to stay away from each other ;)

Six months, four weeks, eight days.

Time lapses like water cutting paths into stone. Sluggish. Dull. Kylo never does come looking for her. Rey acts like it doesn't offend her.

Six months, four weeks, and nine days.

"Do we... even need to rebel at this point?" Rose wonders. "I mean... things aren't..." she looks around shyly, "Things aren't _all_ that bad now, are they?"

Six months, four weeks, and ten days.

It takes as long for Rey to acknowledge that she was the problem. That she made him so much _worse_. It takes as long for Rey to confront the incredible, impossible, indisputable fact—

Without her, Kylo Ren is a soulless husk of a man.

But a very, very good leader.

What was once a teetering, mismanaged, barely-legitimate cesspool of chaos and vitriol transforms into a stable empire overnight. Things are good. As far as autocracies go, this one isn’t the worst. There are functioning social programs. Stable, viable political policy. Piracy becomes a thing of the past. The First Order really cracks down on smuggling, for whatever reason.

It’s no utopia. It’s still aggressively authoritarian. He snaps up worlds like a set of jacks. His critics have a habit of mysteriously disappearing. His political opponents have a knack for conveniently falling off of buildings. There’s an omnipresent paranoia among civilians that one of his many spies may overhear their discussions of politics-- he’s never taken kindly to being criticized-- and the looming possibility of him launching them all into an intergalactic trade war--

But overall, things are going really unexpectedly well. Verging on _prosperous._

It’s almost normalcy, for everyone except Rey.

After he lets her go, Rose brings her back to Takodana where what remains of the resistance is camping out on the First Order Dime, (they've made off like bandits with the money Rey gave them,) and she settles back into her old life almost seamlessly. She’s doing really well. Her friends welcome her back with open arms, because of course they do.

Finn acts like it never happened. He’s very convincing. Sometimes, Rey herself forgets.

Rose is empathetic and inquisitive. She sits with Rey on her cot and asks nonjudgmental questions while they share ration bars, and always gives Rey the bigger half.

Poe claps her on the back a lot and cracks euphemistic jokes. He wants to laugh about it. He needs to laugh about it. Because, of all of them, Rey knows he thinks she loved Kylo. And maybe he’s right.

And Leia doesn’t really handle it. She just blushes and turns away every time Rey meets her eyes and changes the subject almost compulsively even when they _aren’t_ dangerously close to the topic of her son.

As for her son-- he and Rey don’t talk anymore. Ages before the war ended, before the terms of surrender had been negotiated, they used to talk every day. In the mornings. In meetings. At meals. Before bed. Every interaction had been fraught and contentious. Rey once flung a bookend at him. Kylo once leapt up in the middle of a war council and screamed at the empty space in the corner where no one else could see Rey lounging against the wall, smug and satisfied. And it had all been terribly inconvenient. They fought like cats and dogs. Their connection had never been an escape route to any sort of romantic secret rendezvous.

Until now.

It would be one thing if they were just talking. If they sat like they had in that hut so many years before and stared into each other’s eyes and talked to each other and listened. Then it would have been intimate. Tragic, even. But Rey knows better, even if _he_ doesn’t. Theirs is a trashy little dimestore-paperback romance.

It should have been a clean break. Then they could go back to hating each other in peace, and Kylo wouldn’t have to pretend he doesn’t know about the fledgling resistance effort she, Poe, and Leia are putting together. They could just be rivals. Bitter, jaded, heartbroken, uncomplicated rivals.

Sometimes, when things are going especially smoothly, Rey tries to prolong her absences. She ignores him when the bond connects them, and he, always wanting to give the appearance of nonchalance, ignores her in return.

And the wheels keep turning and legislation gets passed and government-issued rations are delivered every backwater planet without incident.

Other times, Rey has less restraint. Other times, they see each other every night. Those nights are wonderful and terrible for them. And just plain terrible for the rest of the galaxy.

Rey alters her strategies sporadically. He probably thinks she does it to hurt him. Sometimes, she likes to see him as much as she can. It helps to throw him off his rhythm. Nights with her frustrate him-- because “I gave you _everything,_ why do you torture me, why don’t you love me?”-- and make him distracted and emotional for days afterwards. If Leia knew about it, Rey thinks she might be in tacit support of her method.

After all. It weakens the enemy. Delegitimize him in the eyes of his inferiors, proves to them he is not infallible.

But when they are apart for long, there is peace. He can focus. Rey can’t. So she goes back to him and tells him that she’s missed his cock-- and he falls for it, the sucker-- and they’re right back at square one.

Their love is written in the stars, but it isn’t meant to be.

“I do love you.” he says, almost stubbornly, as if she’s challenged him. He hikes up her dress and ducks his head, nuzzling the soft, sunburnt skin of her exposed thigh.

Rey threads her fingers in his hair and strokes along his scalp. She hooks one of her knees on the arm of his throne. “I don’t do this to hurt you.” she says.

He looks up at her; all dark, tired, needy eyes and shadows in the hollows of his dear face. He looks like he sometimes does when she tells him she loves him. Self-pitying. Skeptical.

“I have never wanted to hurt you.” she says, and means it.

Ben holds her gaze for a fraction of a second. Then he picks up her ankle and puts it over his shoulder. “Don’t leave till I’m finished.” he says, and buries his face in her.

It strikes Rey that maybe they’re right back where they started. Maybe nothing has changed.

Maybe they will never end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? A quasi-happy ending. Thank you all so much for reading!!! <3


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